Northenden
Encyclopedia
Northenden is a suburb
Suburb
The word suburb mostly refers to a residential area, either existing as part of a city or as a separate residential community within commuting distance of a city . Some suburbs have a degree of administrative autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods...

an area and electoral ward
Wards of the United Kingdom
A ward in the United Kingdom is an electoral district at sub-national level represented by one or more councillors. It is the primary unit of British administrative and electoral geography .-England:...

 of the city of Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

 in North West England
North West England
North West England, informally known as The North West, is one of the nine official regions of England.North West England had a 2006 estimated population of 6,853,201 the third most populated region after London and the South East...

. It lies on the south side of both the River Mersey
River Mersey
The River Mersey is a river in North West England. It is around long, stretching from Stockport, Greater Manchester, and ending at Liverpool Bay, Merseyside. For centuries, it formed part of the ancient county divide between Lancashire and Cheshire....

 and the M60 motorway
M60 motorway
The M60 motorway, or Manchester Orbital, is an orbital motorway circling Greater Manchester, a metropolitan county in North West England. It passes through all Greater Manchester's metropolitan boroughs except for Wigan and Bolton...

, 4.2 miles (6.8 km) west of Stockport
Stockport
Stockport is a town in Greater Manchester, England. It lies on elevated ground southeast of Manchester city centre, at the point where the rivers Goyt and Tame join and create the River Mersey. Stockport is the largest settlement in the metropolitan borough of the same name...

 and 5.2 miles (8.4 km) south of Manchester city centre
Manchester City Centre
Manchester city centre is the central business district of Manchester, England. It lies within the Manchester Inner Ring Road, next to the River Irwell...

. Northenden is bounded by the districts of Didsbury
Didsbury
Didsbury is a suburban area of the City of Manchester, in Greater Manchester, England. It lies on the north bank of the River Mersey, south of Manchester city centre, in the southern half of the Greater Manchester Urban Area...

, Gatley
Gatley
Gatley is a suburban area of the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport, in Greater Manchester, England.-Toponymy:In 1290, Gatley was known as Gateclyve, which in Old English means "a place where goats are kept".-Early history:...

 and Wythenshawe
Wythenshawe
Wythenshawe is a district in the south of the city of Manchester, England.Formerly part of the administrative county of Cheshire, in 1931 Wythenshawe was transferred to the City of Manchester, which had begun building a massive housing estate there in the 1920s to resolve the problem of its inner...

 on the north, east and southwest respectively. Northenden is within the postal area code and electoral boundaries of the Wythenshawe
Wythenshawe
Wythenshawe is a district in the south of the city of Manchester, England.Formerly part of the administrative county of Cheshire, in 1931 Wythenshawe was transferred to the City of Manchester, which had begun building a massive housing estate there in the 1920s to resolve the problem of its inner...

 district.

Anciently
Historic counties of England
The historic counties of England are subdivisions of England established for administration by the Normans and in most cases based on earlier Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and shires...

 a part of Cheshire
Cheshire
Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...

, Northenden was formerly a rural township
Township (England)
In England, a township is a local division or district of a large parish containing a village or small town usually having its own church...

 and parish
Parish
A parish is a territorial unit historically under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of one parish priest, who might be assisted in his pastoral duties by a curate or curates - also priests but not the parish priest - from a more or less central parish church with its associated organization...

 within the hundred of Bucklow
Bucklow (hundred)
The hundred of Bucklow was an ancient division of the historic county of Cheshire, in northern England. It was known to have been in existence at least as early as 1260, and it was formed from the earlier Domesday hundreds of Bochelau and Tunendune.-Courts:...

. Despite a process of unplanned urbanisation
Urbanization
Urbanization, urbanisation or urban drift is the physical growth of urban areas as a result of global change. The United Nations projected that half of the world's population would live in urban areas at the end of 2008....

 and population growth in its neighbours during the 19th century, Northenden remained a comparatively rural and unpopulated area which spanned the hamlets
Hamlet (place)
A hamlet is usually a rural settlement which is too small to be considered a village, though sometimes the word is used for a different sort of community. Historically, when a hamlet became large enough to justify building a church, it was then classified as a village...

 of Lawton Moor, Northern Moor
Northern Moor
Northern Moor is an area of northern Wythenshawe in south Manchester in England, west of Northenden, north of Wythenshawe Park. Its name was formerly spelt "Northen Moor", i.e. "the moor area belonging to Northenden"....

, Rose Hill and a part of what is now Wythenshawe. By 1866 Northenden had coalesced and became a civil parish. The industrialisation of neighbouring Manchester resulted in overpopulation
Overpopulation
Overpopulation is a condition where an organism's numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. The term often refers to the relationship between the human population and its environment, the Earth...

, and so in the early 20th century Manchester City Council
Manchester City Council
Manchester City Council is the local government authority for Manchester, a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. It is composed of 96 councillors, three for each of the 32 electoral wards of Manchester. Currently the council is controlled by the Labour Party and is led by...

 used the Local Government Act 1929
Local Government Act 1929
The Local Government Act 1929 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that made changes to the Poor Law and local government in England and Wales....

 to extend its boundaries to encompass Northenden in 1931.

Throughout the mid-20th century Northenden was redeveloped as an overspill estate
Overspill estate
An overspill estate is a housing estate planned and built for the rehousing of people from decaying inner city areas usually as part of the process of slum clearance....

 in southern Manchester.

History

Northenden was mentioned as Norwordine in the Domesday Book
Domesday Book
Domesday Book , now held at The National Archives, Kew, Richmond upon Thames in South West London, is the record of the great survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086...

 of 1086; its name came from Anglo-Saxon Norþ-worþign = "north enclosure". It was then a small farming community with a manor house
Manor house
A manor house is a country house that historically formed the administrative centre of a manor, the lowest unit of territorial organisation in the feudal system in Europe. The term is applied to country houses that belonged to the gentry and other grand stately homes...

 and woodland. Another theory is that the name means "northern dale or valley", presumably because it was near the River Mersey
River Mersey
The River Mersey is a river in North West England. It is around long, stretching from Stockport, Greater Manchester, and ending at Liverpool Bay, Merseyside. For centuries, it formed part of the ancient county divide between Lancashire and Cheshire....

. In later times Northenden was sometimes called Northen.

There was a weir
Weir
A weir is a small overflow dam used to alter the flow characteristics of a river or stream. In most cases weirs take the form of a barrier across the river that causes water to pool behind the structure , but allows water to flow over the top...

 on the Mersey there in the 14th century (where Mill Lane stands now) and a mill was set up to grind corn. The mill belonged to the Tatton family of Wythenshawe Hall
Wythenshawe Hall
Wythenshawe Hall is a 16th-century medieval timber-framed historic house and former stately home in Wythenshawe, Manchester, England. It is east of Altrincham and south of Stretford, five miles south of Manchester city centre, in Wythenshawe Park.-History:The half-timbered Tudor house was the home...

, but was demolished in the 1960s.

As Northenden is on a major (and very old) crossing place of the Mersey on the "Salt Road
Salt Road
A salt road ) is any of the prehistoric and historical trade routes by which essential salt has been transported to regions that lacked it ....

"
from Cheshire to Manchester, it prospered in medieval times. The ford was an important way into and out of and into Manchester (now Ford Lane), as there was no bridge over the Mersey between Sale
Sale, Greater Manchester
Sale is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, in Greater Manchester, England. Historically part of Cheshire, the town lies on flat ground on the south bank of the River Mersey, south of Stretford, northeast of Altrincham, and southwest of the city of Manchester...

 and Stockport
Stockport
Stockport is a town in Greater Manchester, England. It lies on elevated ground southeast of Manchester city centre, at the point where the rivers Goyt and Tame join and create the River Mersey. Stockport is the largest settlement in the metropolitan borough of the same name...

, until in 1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie's army built a troop-bridge out of big poplar
Poplar
Populus is a genus of 25–35 species of deciduous flowering plants in the family Salicaceae, native to most of the Northern Hemisphere. English names variously applied to different species include poplar , aspen, and cottonwood....

 tree trunks where the B5095 (Manchester Road, Didsbury) now crosses the Mersey, south of Didsbury
Didsbury
Didsbury is a suburban area of the City of Manchester, in Greater Manchester, England. It lies on the north bank of the River Mersey, south of Manchester city centre, in the southern half of the Greater Manchester Urban Area...

, in his abortive attempt to seize the crown of England. The Northenden ford was unusual because its northern and southern ends were not opposite each other, but people using the ford had to wade about 500 feet along the riverbed. The Simon's Bridge was built at the ford in 1901 to help access to Poor's Field, and the rent from this field was used by the church to buy blankets and clothes for the needy.

Distance from Manchester enabled Northenden to avoid the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...

 in the 19th century. The nearest it came to industrialisation was a cottage industry in flax
Flax
Flax is a member of the genus Linum in the family Linaceae. It is native to the region extending from the eastern Mediterranean to India and was probably first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent...

 spinning. In the 1980s the area became part of the Mersey Valley Park, and the banks of the river form part of the Mersey Valley Trail.

Northenden began to develop as an attractive riverside township for Manchester's more affluent managers, clerks and tradesmen, and the Victorian and Edwardian development gives the village much of its present character. In the wake of Manchester's acquisition of Wythenshawe for a new Garden City. Northenden became an official district of Manchester in 1931.

Northenden is often referred to as a village by the locals, but was engulfed in suburban housing as the very large Wythenshawe
Wythenshawe
Wythenshawe is a district in the south of the city of Manchester, England.Formerly part of the administrative county of Cheshire, in 1931 Wythenshawe was transferred to the City of Manchester, which had begun building a massive housing estate there in the 1920s to resolve the problem of its inner...

 housing estate was built during the first half of the 20th century. Northenden, whose centre was formerly Church Road, rapidly developed a new shopping centre along Palatine Road (a new road built to connect with Manchester) to service the new neighbourhood with shops, schools, a cinema (closed 1974), hotels, churches, small businesses and service industries. Eventually, a larger shopping centre and various amenities were built in the centre of Wythenshawe in the late 1960s, though Northenden still is busy.

Northenden railway station
Northenden railway station
Northenden railway station was located in Manchester, England. It was built by the Stockport, Timperley and Altrincham Junction Railway and was opened for both passenger and goods traffic on 1 February 1866....

 served the area between 1866 and 1964, being between Sharston Road and Longley Lane. Passenger trains from Stockport Tiviot Dale
Stockport Tiviot Dale railway station
Stockport Tiviot Dale was one of two main railway stations serving the town of Stockport, Cheshire, England, the other being Stockport Edgeley .-Location and operating companies:...

 to Warrington
Warrington Central railway station
Warrington Central railway station is one of two main railway stations serving the town of Warrington in the north-west of England. It is located on the southern route of the Liverpool to Manchester Line , and is situated around halfway between the two cities...

 and Liverpool
Liverpool Central railway station
Liverpool Central railway station is a railway station in Liverpool, England, and forms the central hub of the Merseyrail network, being on both the Northern Line and the Wirral Line. In the years 2008/09, Liverpool Central station was shown to be the busiest station in Liverpool, despite being...

 stopped here.

Governance

Northenden was one of the eight ancient parishes of the Macclesfield Hundred
Macclesfield (hundred)
The hundred of Macclesfield was an ancient division of the historic county of Cheshire, in northern England. It was known to have been in existence at least as early as 1242, and it was formed to a great extent from the earlier Domesday hundred of Hamestan...

 of Cheshire
Cheshire
Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...

 and included the township
Township
The word township is used to refer to different kinds of settlements in different countries. Township is generally associated with an urban area. However there are many exceptions to this rule. In Australia, the United States, and Canada, they may be settlements too small to be considered urban...

 of Northen Etchells
Northen Etchells
Northen Etchells is a former township in Greater Manchester, England. It lay in the historic county of Cheshire....

. Under the Poor Law Amendment Act 1886 the parish was split in two as Northen Etchells became a civil parish in its own right. In 1931 both parishes were incorporated into the civil parish and city of Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

, along with the civil parish of Baguley
Baguley
Baguley is a locality in Wythenshawe, and an electoral ward of the city of Manchester in North West England.Historically within Cheshire, the town is mentioned as Bagelei in the Domesday Book of 1086.-History:...

, which was part of the Bucklow Hundred
Bucklow (hundred)
The hundred of Bucklow was an ancient division of the historic county of Cheshire, in northern England. It was known to have been in existence at least as early as 1260, and it was formed from the earlier Domesday hundreds of Bochelau and Tunendune.-Courts:...

 of Cheshire.

Geography

Northenden is located in the southern end of the city of Manchester, 5.2 miles (8.4 km) from the city centre, and begins on the south bank of the River Mersey
River Mersey
The River Mersey is a river in North West England. It is around long, stretching from Stockport, Greater Manchester, and ending at Liverpool Bay, Merseyside. For centuries, it formed part of the ancient county divide between Lancashire and Cheshire....

.

Northenden is now in a triangle formed by two motorways (the M56 and M60) and a main dual carriageway
Dual carriageway
A dual carriageway is a class of highway with two carriageways for traffic travelling in opposite directions separated by a central reservation...

 (Princess Parkway). Manchester Airport is approximately 4 miles to the south by road.

Northenden is part of the South Manchester district of Wythenshawe
Wythenshawe
Wythenshawe is a district in the south of the city of Manchester, England.Formerly part of the administrative county of Cheshire, in 1931 Wythenshawe was transferred to the City of Manchester, which had begun building a massive housing estate there in the 1920s to resolve the problem of its inner...

 and is in the same postal area code and Parliamentary ward (Wythenshawe and Sale East
Wythenshawe and Sale East
Wythenshawe and Sale East is a parliamentary constituency in the city of Manchester. It returns one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first past the post system.- Boundaries :...

). However, in 2006, after Manchester City Council erected a road sign that said "Welcome to Northenden, Wythenshawe", many Northenden residents protested the inclusion of the word "Wythenshawe". The residents were accused by one local councillor of snobbish behaviour and attempting to distance themselves from the Wythenshawe area (which is primarily social housing) for the sake of house prices as well as wanting to be seen more as an extension of the affluent neighbouring Didsbury
Didsbury
Didsbury is a suburban area of the City of Manchester, in Greater Manchester, England. It lies on the north bank of the River Mersey, south of Manchester city centre, in the southern half of the Greater Manchester Urban Area...

 area. The city council agreed to remove the word "Wythenshawe" from the sign, though Northenden still remains a part of the Wythenshawe area with the same postal area code and electoral boundaries.

Places of interest

Church of St Wilfrid, Northenden
Church of St Wilfrid, Northenden
The Church of St Wilfrid in Ford Lane, Northenden, Manchester, England, is an Anglican church of late medieval origins which was substantially re-built in the 19th century by J. S. Crowther...

 is a Grade II* listed building. Most of the church's structure dates from the 19th century, apart from the tower which was built in the 15th century. The 19th century remodelling was done in red sandstone and is an example of Perpendicular Gothic architecture. St Wilfrid's contains a memorial to 19th-century railway chairman Sir Edward Watkin, founder of the Channel Tunnel Company, who is buried in the church grounds.

Northenden has the largest Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall
Kingdom Hall
A Kingdom Hall is a place of worship used by Jehovah's Witnesses. The term was first suggested in 1935 by Joseph Franklin Rutherford, then president of the Watch Tower Society, for a building in Hawaii...

 in the area, a former cinema dating from the 1930s called the Forum.

The area also has places of worship for Methodists, Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Mormon
Mormon
The term Mormon most commonly denotes an adherent, practitioner, follower, or constituent of Mormonism, which is the largest branch of the Latter Day Saint movement in restorationist Christianity...

s and Quakers.

Northenden Social Club's first premises was a converted First World War army hut, originally used by the medical officer at Heaton Park
Heaton Park
Heaton Park, covering an area variously reported as , 247 hectares, , over and is the biggest park in Greater Manchester, England and one of the biggest municipal parks in Europe. The park comprises the grounds of a Grade I listed, neoclassical 18th century country house, Heaton Hall...

. To buy it cost £114; the club had to find another £412 to pay for it to be transported to their site and set up as a social club. In front of the club is the Northenden War Memorial
War memorial
A war memorial is a building, monument, statue or other edifice to celebrate a war or victory, or to commemorate those who died or were injured in war.-Historic usage:...

.

Notable people

Absalom Watkin (1787–1861). Born London. Manchester businessman and Liberal reformer. Rose Hill
Rose Hill, Northenden
Rose Hill in Longley Lane, Northenden, Manchester, England, is a 19th-century Victorian villa, most notable as the home of Sir Edward Watkin, "railway king and cross-channel visionary". The house was designated a Grade II* listed building on 11 April 1991.Sir Edward's father, Absalom Watkin,...

, a Grade II* listed Victorian villa off Longley Lane (now on Bronington Close) was built for him and his family. The property became a children's home for Manchester Corporation (now City Council) closing in the 1990s. The property became derelict until bought up (along with the grounds) in the late 1990s, subsequently refurbished as private apartments with the grounds being developed for private housing.

Sir Edward Watkin
Edward Watkin
Sir Edward William Watkin, 1st Baronet was an English railway chairman and politician.- Biography :Watkin was born in Salford, Lancashire, the son of a wealthy cotton merchant, Absalom Watkin who was noted for his involvement in the Anti-corn Law League.After a private education, he returned to...

 (1819–1901). Born in Salford. Victorian railway magnate and Channel Tunnel visionary lived at Rose Hill
Rose Hill, Northenden
Rose Hill in Longley Lane, Northenden, Manchester, England, is a 19th-century Victorian villa, most notable as the home of Sir Edward Watkin, "railway king and cross-channel visionary". The house was designated a Grade II* listed building on 11 April 1991.Sir Edward's father, Absalom Watkin,...

.

Public services

Northenden is covered by the South Manchester Division of Greater Manchester Police
Greater Manchester Police
Greater Manchester Police is the police force responsible for law enforcement within the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester in North West England...

. The local Neighbourhood Policing Team is the Northenden Neighbourhood Policing Team, which covers Northenden, Brooklands and Baguley.

River Mersey

A section of the River Mersey is in the town of Northenden and one of its more popular parts is the weir, which now has a fish ladder so migrating salmon and sea trout can get upstream because the weir is flat with tiles and only a thin sheet of water running down the weir as it is fairly wide. Fishing can be very good here as this stretch contains trout
Trout
Trout is the name for a number of species of freshwater and saltwater fish belonging to the Salmoninae subfamily of the family Salmonidae. Salmon belong to the same family as trout. Most salmon species spend almost all their lives in salt water...

, roach
Roach (fish)
The Common Roach is a freshwater and brackish water fish native to most of Europe and western Asia...

, dace
Dace
A dace is any of a number of species of small fish. The unmodified name is usually a reference to the Common Dace . This, like most fishes called "daces", belongs to the family Cyprinidae, mostly in subfamily Leuciscinae....

, eel
Eel
Eels are an order of fish, which consists of four suborders, 20 families, 111 genera and approximately 800 species. Most eels are predators...

s, pike
Esox
Esox is a genus of freshwater fish, the only living genus in the family Esocidae — the esocids which were endemic to North America, Europe and Eurasia during the Paleogene through present.The type species is E. lucius, the northern pike...

, salmon
Salmon
Salmon is the common name for several species of fish in the family Salmonidae. Several other fish in the same family are called trout; the difference is often said to be that salmon migrate and trout are resident, but this distinction does not strictly hold true...

 (mid autumn-mid-spring and this goes for sea trout), chub
Chub
The European chub , sometimes called the round chub, fat chub, chevin, pollard or simply "the" chub, is a freshwater fish of the family Cyprinidae...

, barbel and some grayling
Grayling (genus)
Thymallus is a genus of freshwater fish in the salmon family of order Salmoniformes; it is the only genus of subfamily Thymallinae. The type species is T. thymallus, the grayling. The genus's five distinct species are generically called graylings, but without qualification this also refers...

 have been caught.

External links

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